Asya Pereltsvaig - Languages of the World: An Introduction

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To my parents, Freyda and Michael Pereltsvayg,

Ancient Greeks were among the first ones to make the observation still relevant today that languages differ from one another. Languages use different sounds to make up different words and combine words into phrases and sentences in very different ways. When I was growing up in Saint Petersburg, Russia, my family spoke Russian. In this language, the same word is used for house and home, while two different words describe what Russian speakers perceive as two different colors ( sinij and goluboj ), which English speakers group as blue. Russian has soft (palatalized) consonant s but lacks the English thsounds ( and , in a linguistic notation). English distinguishes a blue house from the blue house , while Russian has no counterpart to English articles a or the. Unlike English, Russian stacks all question words at the beginning of a sentence, as in Kto chto gde kogda kupil? (literally Who what where when bought?). The list goes on, and each language presents its own peculiar twists. Yet, as you will discover in this book, there are many ways in which languages are similar and use the same patterns in widely dispersed parts of the world.

This book combines geolinguistics (what languages are spoken where and by whom) with typology (in what ways languages differ and in what ways they are similar). It is organized geographically (you can see the breakdown of the world into chapters in ): as you travel through the worlds regions, you will learn not only what languages you might encounter there (this information is easily obtainable online) but how these languages are related to one another, what peculiarities they share, and what unique features they exhibit. You will also gain an appreciation of what is exotic in languages, not from the perspective of English alone, but from a more global point of view. You may even appreciate how exotic English itself is, when compared to other languages of the world.

While intended primarily as an undergraduate textbook, and complete with pedagogical features described below, this book can serve as an introduction to the world of language and the worlds languages for a general reader as well. No knowledge of linguistics or of any particular language (besides English, of course!) is presupposed, and all technical terminology is explained in the text and in the glossary at the end of the book. Numerous examples are included throughout the book to illustrate the linguistic phenomena being discussed, as are URLs of websites where you can hear the sounds of various languages, explore their grammatical properties, or investigate their geographical distribution. (The links are also posted on the accompanying website, hosted by Cambridge University Press.)

Whether or not you are using this book for a college class, I highly recommend that you roll up your sleeves and work through at least some of the Do It Yourself sections at the end of each chapter. Linguistics is a little like ballet: you cannot really learn it properly without doing it yourself. All the assignments included in this book are designed to be approachable and solvable! with just the information provided here or in the websites that are incorporated into specific assignments. (This third edition has been enriched by the addition of many new Do It Yourself problems. Answers to the problems are available for course instructors only.)

Each chapter also includes a number of features whose goal is to add interesting information, ease the reading, or keep you, the reader, on your toes. Each chapter opens with a short narrative introduction, which includes a textbox listing all the language families spoken in the region, with the numbers of chapters/sections where these languages are discussed. Each chapter includes one or more longer textboxes that cover tangential topics, like indigenous African writing systems and taboo languages, and several short Did you know? boxes that present tidbits and factoids about the material discussed in the main text. Each chapter also includes a Fascinating Language sidebar that provides a very brief overview of one of the corresponding regions languages. Some sections are partitioned from the rest of the text as Advanced; these segments, concerned with slightly more complicated phenomena, are meant to still be readable without any prerequisite knowledge, but you will not hurt my feelings if you decide to skip them. In addition to being updated and revised, this third edition includes several entirely new sections, including ones discussing sign languages, constructed languages, language maps, and more.